Abstract:
Land use/cover change is a major global environmental change issue and projecting these changes is essential
for the assessment of environmental impacts. In this study, combined use of satellite remote sensing,
geographic information systems (GIS), and Markov chains stochastic modeling techniques were employed in
analyzing and projecting land use/cover changes. The results indicate that there has been a notable and uneven
urban growth with a substantial loss in forest land and that the land use/cover change process has not
stabilized. The study demonstrates that the integration of satellite remote sensing and GIS can be an effective
approach for analyzing the spatio-temporal patterns of land use/cover change. Further integration of these two
techniques with Markov modeling was found to be beneficial in describing, analyzing and projecting land
use/cover change process. The projected land use/cover for 2015 show a substantial increase in urban and
agricultural land uses in the study area to a deeper extent.